I've been happily using a umsm(4) sierra wireless aircard 580[1]. It literally took less than 5 minutes to get this card moving in OpenBSD with the ppp.conf example in umsm(4). Highly recommend this card, its about $60 on ebay these days.
EVDO rev a was deployed to my area, and I was happy with the sierra model (though not ecstatic over the latency), so I purchased a 'Sierra wireless aircard 595' [2]. Somebody reported success in linux[3] with this card, and umsm(4) listed this device as a maybe. I forked out the $262, and Unfortunately this was not the 5-minute success story as I had hoped for. Although it attached to ucom0, if I used cu -l /dev/cuaU0 -s 230400, I was not able to input an "at" (and receive "OK", such as on the 580). I wondered if the 168Mhz laptop I was using it with was too old (pcmcia type II? what? it fit...), so I built a fresh 1.2Ghz i386 and used a pci<->pcmcia card with similar deadlock serial. This also failed the same way on macppc. There is a 30 day return limit on these, so I've re-activated the 580 (effectively disabling the new card) and returned this product. So my question: I am using sprintpcs as my provider. Can anybody report success with the 'Merlin PC720' [4]? 1. http://www.sierrawireless.com/product/ac580.aspx 2. http://www.sierrawireless.com/product/ac595.aspx 3. http://www.pbandjelly.org/2006/12/sierra-wireless-aircard-595-configuration-sprintpcs/ 4. http://www.novatelwireless.com/products/merlin/merlin-pc720.html Thanks, jdq
